Description of Research Expertise

Description of Research

The human genome contains ~25,000 protein-coding genes representing less than 2% of the total genome, whereas up to 70% of the human genome is transcribed to RNA, yielding many thousands of non-coding RNAs. The recent discovery of non-coding RNA genes has dramatically altered our understanding on cancer. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are operationally defined as RNA genes larger than 200 nucleotide that do not appear to have protein coding potential. micoRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenous ~18-25 nucleotide non-coding small RNAs which regulate gene expression in a sequence-specific manner via the degradation of target mRNAs or the inhibition of protein translation. The Zhang laboratory is interested in molecular mechanisms of non-coding RNAs (microRNA and lncRNA) in tumorigenesis, and the potential application of non-coding RNA in treatment for breast and ovarian cancer. High-throughput profiling technologies (microarray and deep-sequencing) and whole-genome wide miRNA/siRNA screening are used in the laboratory.